A novel system for underwater docking in difficult situations

In order to carry out tasks such as the rescue of disabled submarine when the state of the sea is unfavorable and the direct docking is impossible, a novel automatic underwater docking system has been developed in laboratory for experiment and further research. The system has four manipulators, each is controlled by a single chip microcomputer in order to realize some low level local intelligence. These four single chip microcomputers operate in coordination under the supervision of another single chip microcomputer which also serves for the communication with the computer of the Integrated Control And Display system (ICAD). The overall description, docking strategy, fuzzy method which was applied in docking procedure and made the cheap electromagnet valve controlled manipulators suitable for application, some features in program design for realizing system function, and some preliminary experiments are presented in this paper.